“If you think Independence Day is America’s defining holiday, think again. Thanksgiving deserves that title, hands-down.”
Tony Snow
I’m going to start out this post with a personal “thanksgiving”. I’m thankful for three years of successfully writing this Liberty Belle blog. This is my third Thanksgiving post and for that alone, I am thankful. I’m thankful to every single on of you, my readers, even the ones with whom I may disagree… because no matter what, you’ve continually shown up, supported and desired to learn about the Constitution and our government….regardless of how unpopular such topics have become.
It’s been a crazy three years. I started this blog in December of 2019. Little did I know just how critical or sought after the simplicity of Constitutional education was going to become within a matter of months. Yes, Americans should always be striving to know the job description of government, but there’s never a more dire need of such knowledge than in a time of crisis.
So, thank YOU everyone who desires to know and learn about the Constitution. Thank YOU for walking through these two years with me as I’ve grown, matured and changed my own views on things, sometimes at times veering into the political more than the Liberty Belle of today would. It’s been a journey and one that I so enjoy taking with every single one of you.
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.
Melody Beattie
What I’ve come to realize over the past two years is something simple and yet profound. What makes America stand out from the crowd of nations that line the hallways of history?
Is it her power? Is it her liberty? Is it her innovation and continual drive to pursue and push for more?
Or is it perhaps the fact that, in this country, we celebrate a holiday that no other country celebrates.
Thanksgiving.
Perhaps America is powerful because she is thankful. Perhaps she is free because she is thankful. And perhaps she innovates and drives for success because she’s thankful.
Consider. For one day, the whole country comes to a pause to thank the Lord for what we already have. That alone is the bane of all revolutionary, communist or socialist ideations.
The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have been more impoverished than these who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving.
H. U. Westermayer
Thankfulness abolishes anger and entitlement. Thankfulness stirs up hope and expectation and thankfulness implies that there’s someone outside of us to whom we owe our thanks. Thankfulness assumes that we are not all there is to the world and it forces us to look at what we have rather than what we lack.
So, why is Thanksgiving such a precious and unique holiday to America?
Because, in this country, thankfulness is what we were built upon.
I’m continually amazed to be able to write and research about such a beautifully messy, unique and splendid country. I’m astonished daily that, despite everything, she continues to stand for the principles of liberty and limited government. I’m thankful that the Constitution still resonates with most Americans and I’m humbled to have been born in a country where the government works for the people and not the other way around.
Pride slays thanksgiving, but a humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grow. A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.
Henry Ward Beecher
Yes, time and corruption have greatly eroded many of these precious American values but friends, they still hold true today. You and I still have an America to be thankful for. There’s hope yet because of the unnatural and wonderful attachment Americans have to the principles of liberty, limited government and the founding. We may find these attachments to be waning but, I’ve come to learn that from the perspective of foreigners, our adulation and support for such things is rare and baffling.
We don’t live in a world where the government is the law. We get to live in a world where the law is the law and government must follow the law.
Indeed, what a rarity.
Perhaps thankfulness truly is the key to what makes America so blessed. Without thankfulness, we have nothing to fight for, nothing to die for, and nothing to live for. A life rooted in unthankfulness is not life at all. Yet, here in America, I’m daily interacting with Americans of all different backgrounds and beliefs who are drawn together with an urgency for themselves and their posterity to live, fight and die for the blessings this nation has given them. Such an urgency, such a fight simply could not exist if there was nothing to be thankful for, fight for, die for and live for in the first place.
If you are really thankful, what do you do? You share.
W. Clement Stone
We are able to pause and, on Thanksgiving, truly acknowledge these blessings for which we are thankful.
God has blessed this nation immensely.
If we lose our thanksgiving for this blessing, we lose the blessing–the nation.
Conclusion
Friends, let me be a bit vulnerable for a moment. My heart hurts to see what’s happening in our country today, to see the flagrant disregard that my fellow Americans have for the blessings of liberty and limited government we share here. I wish I could pull all 350 million together and plead for them to see what they have, the wonderful blessing they hold in their hands, the blessing they are about to let slip through their hands and lose forever.
And friends, despite America’s flaws, previous and current, I love this nation and no matter what the future holds, I will always love her. I’m exceedingly thankful to God for the liberty America has bestowed upon me and even if it is lost in my lifetime, I will forever be grateful for her.
So, today, the day before Thanksgiving in 2022, I’m thankful that I still live in a nation called America, where liberty is proclaimed, bravery loved and thanksgiving embraced.
Happy Thanksgiving friends, Happy Thanksgiving.
The Liberty Belle
And A Happy Thanksgiving to you Ms. McMasters , it’s the rare few folks like yourself that we can thank to be willing to publish freely , and say ” to thank the LORD ” because no where that I can find in the consitution ” seperation of church and government ” but more so the foundations of this country are built on our christian ideals . So thanks again for all your educational info on ” our ” constitution . Some day if the courts ever apply the laws as written up here in northern Michigan , we still look forward to inviting you up and educating the FACTIONS on the constitution and the why federalist papers co-incide with one another , then hopefully corruption will be matched and we together with ambition for the constitution and liberty take our country back before it slips completely . THANKS , Ron
Bless you Christin & a Happy Thanksgiving to you too! I’m definitely thankful that I found your Blog in May and a thus a remarkably intelligent, well educated, younger generation to carry on our fight to preserve the Liberty & Freedom provided by our adherence to our Blessed Constitution and our Lord Jesus Christ!!!
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You ask above “What makes America stand out from the crowd of nations that line the hallways of history?”
America is unique in all the world in that we are not formed based on geography, or ethnicity, or religion, but on an idea. That idea that the Declaration of Independence clearly states is “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” including “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Then there is our Constitution which unlike other nations is intended to endure not evolve. It is not a common good Constitutionalism where the government can exercise powers it does not constitutionally have nor enshrine rights the people do not constitutionally possess. The aim of the Constitution was not to eliminate classes and redistribute wealth but to protect the citizens from an arbitrary, abusive, overstepping government. PERIOD!
Therefore, when we say the “American experiment”, this is not a cliche. The creation of the U.S. government really was an experiment based on theories and assumptions about human nature and government. The framers had no idea if “A Republic if you can keep it” would actually work and result in liberty not only being preserved but promoted.
It is your work elaborating on the above facts and supported by an easy to understand analyzing of the founding documents themselves that “WE” should be grateful for. We all have “grown” by the bipartisanship your blog entails.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family and of course all of your readers……………………..Bob
P.S. I also must add a sincere “thank you” for letting me add my two cents occasionally.